Secret Vampire (3 page)

"Wanna be friends?"

After a brief hesitation he'd nodded shyly. There
had been something oddly sweet in his smile.

But Poppy had soon found that her new friend was
strange in small ways. When the class lizard died,
he'd picked up the corpse without revulsion and
asked Poppy if she wanted to hold it. The teacher
had been horrified.

He knew where to find dead animals, too-he'd
shown her a vacant lot where several rabbit carcasses
lay in the tall brown grass. He was matter-of-fact
about it.

When he got older, the big kids stopped picking
on him. He grew up to be as tall as any of them, and
surprisingly strong and quick-and he developed a
reputation for being tough and dangerous. When he
got angry, something almost frightening shone in his
gray eyes.

He never got angry with Poppy, though. They'd
remained best friends all these years. When they'd
reached junior high, he'd started having girlfriends
all the girls at school wanted him
but he never kept
any of them long. And he never confided in them;
to them he was a mysterious, secretive bad boy. Only Poppy saw the other side of him, the vulnerable, caring side.

"Okay," the technician said, bringing Poppy back
to the present with a jerk. "You're done; let's wipe
this jelly off you."

"So what did it show?" Poppy asked, glancing up
at the monitor.

"Oh, your own doctor will tell you that. The radi
ologist will read the results and call them over to
your doctor's office." The technician's voice was ab
solutely neutral-so neutral that Poppy looked at
her sharply.

Back in Dr. Franklin's office, Poppy fidgeted while
her mother paged through out-of-date magazines.
When the nurse said "Mrs. Hilgard," they both
stood up.

"Uh-no," the nurse said, looking flustered. "Mrs.
Hilgard, the doctor just wants to
see
you for a min
ute-alone."

Poppy and her mother looked at each other. Then,
slowly, Poppy's mother put down her
People
magazine and followed the nurse.

Poppy stared after her.

Now, what on
earth
. . .
Dr. Franklin had never
done
that
before.

Poppy realized that her heart was beating hard. Not
fast, just hard. Bang
...
bang
... bang, in the middle
of her chest, shaking her insides. Making her feel
unreal and giddy.

Don't think about it. It's probably nothing. Read
a magazine.

But her fingers didn't seem to work properly. When she finally got the magazine open, her eyes
ran over the words without delivering them to her
brain.

What are they talking about in there? What's going
on?
It's been so long....

It kept getting longer. As Poppy waited, she found
herself vacillating between two modes of thought. 1)
Nothing serious was wrong with her and her mother
was going to come out and laugh at her for even
imagining there was, and 2) Something awful was
wrong with her and she was going to have to go
through some dreadful treatment to get well. The cov
ered pit and the open pit. When the pit was covered,
it seemed laughable, and she felt embarrassed for hav
ing such melodramatic thoughts. But when it was
open, she felt as if all her life before this had been a
dream, and now she was hitting hard reality at last.

I wish I could call James, she thought.

At last the nurse said, "Poppy? Come on in."

Dr. Franklin's office was wood-paneled, with cer
tificates and diplomas hanging on the walls. Poppy
sat down in a leather chair and tried not to be too
obvious about scanning her mother's face.

Her mother looked
...
too calm. Calm with strain
underneath. She was smiling, but it was an odd,
slightly unsteady smile.

Oh, God, Poppy thought. Something
is
going on.

"Now, there's no cause for alarm," the doctor said,
and immediately Poppy became more alarmed. Her
palms stuck to the leather of the chair arms.

"Something showed up in your sonogram that's a
little unusual, and I'd like to do a couple of other
tests," Dr. Franklin said, his voice slow and mea
sured, soothing. "One of the tests requires that you
fast from midnight the day before you take it. But
your mom says you didn't eat breakfast today."

Poppy said mechanically, "I ate one Frosted Flake."

"One
Frosted Flake? Well, I think we can count
that as fasting. We'll do the tests today, and I think
it's best to admit you to the hospital for them. Now,
the tests are called a CAT scan and an ERCP-that's
short for something even I can't pronounce." He
smiled. Poppy just stared at him.

"There's nothing frightening about either of these
tests," he said gently. "The CAT scan is like an X ray. The ERCP involves passing a tube down the throat,
through the stomach, and into the pancreas. Then
we inject into the tube a liquid that will show up on
X rays
."

His mouth kept moving, but Poppy had stopped
hearing the words. She was more frightened than she
could remember being in a long time.

I was just joking about the interesting scar, she
thought. I don't want a
real
disease. I don't want to
go to the hospital, and I don't want any tubes down my throat.

She looked at her mother in mute appeal. Her mother took her hand.

"It's no big deal, sweetheart. We'll just go home and
pack a few things for you; then we'll come back."
"I have to go into the hospital
today?"

"I think that would be best," Dr. Franklin said.

Poppy's hand tightened on her mother's. Her mind was a humming blank.

When they left the office, her mother said, "Thank
you, Owen." Poppy had never heard her call Dr.
Franklin by his first name before.

Poppy didn't ask why. She didn't say anything as
they walked out of the building and got in the car.
As they drove home, her mother began to chat about
ordinary things in a light, calm voice, and Poppy
made herself answer. Pretending that everything was
normal, while all the time the terrible sick feeling raged inside her.

It was only when they were in her bedroom, pack
ing mystery books and cotton pajamas into a small
suitcase, that she asked almost casually, "So what
exactly does he think is wrong with me?"

Her mother didn't answer immediately. She was
looking down at the suitcase. Finally she said, "Well,
he's not sure
anything is
wrong."

"But what does he
think?
He must think some
thing. And he was talking about my pancreas-I
mean, it sounds like he thinks there's something
wrong with my pancreas. I thought he was looking at my
gallbladder
or whatever. I didn't even know
that my pancreas was
involved
in
this...."

"Sweetheart." Her mother took her by the shoul
ders, and Poppy realized she was getting a little over
wrought. She took a deep breath.

"I just want to know the truth, okay? I just want
to have some idea of what's going on. It's my body,

and I've got a right to know what they're looking
for-don't I?"

It was a brave speech, and she didn't mean any of it. What she really wanted was reassurance, a prom
ise that Dr. Franklin was looking for something triv
ial. That the worst that could happen wouldn't be so
bad. She didn't get it.

"Yes, you do have a right to know." Her mother
let a long breath out, then spoke slowly. "Poppy, Dr.
Franklin was concerned about your pancreas all
along. Apparently things can happen in the pancreas
that cause changes in other organs, like the gallblad
der and liver. When Dr. Franklin felt those changes,
he decided to check things out with a sonogram."

Poppy swallowed. "And he said the sonogram
was-unusual. How unusual?"

"Poppy, this is all preliminary...." Her mother
saw her face and sighed. She went on reluctantly.
"The sonogram showed that there might be some
thing in your pancreas. Something that shouldn't be
there. That's why Dr. Franklin wants the other tests;
they'll tell us for sure. But-"

"Something that shouldn't be there? You mean ... like a tumor? Like ...
cancer?" Strange, it was hard
to say the words.

Her mother nodded once. "Yes. Like cancer."

CHAPTER 3

All Poppy could think of was the pretty bald girl in
the gift shop.

Cancer.

"But-but they can do something about it, can't
they?" she said, and even to her own ears her voice
sounded very young. "I mean-if they had to, they
could take my pancreas
out...."

"Oh, sweetheart,
of course.
"
Poppy's mother took Poppy in her arms. "I promise you; if there's some
thing wrong, we'll do anything and everything to fix it. I'd go to the ends of the earth to make you well.
You know
that. And at this point we aren't even sure that there
is
something wrong. Dr. Franklin said that
it's extremely rare for teenagers to get a tumor in the pancreas. Extremely rare. So let's not worry about things until we have to."

Poppy felt herself relax; the pit was covered again. But somewhere near her core she still felt cold.

"I have
to call James."

Her mother nodded. "Just make it quick."

Poppy kept her fingers crossed as she dialed
James's apartment. Please be there, please
be
there, she thought. And for once, he was. He answered la
conically, but as soon as he heard her voice, he said,
"What's wrong?"

"Nothing-well, everything. Maybe." Poppy heard
herself give a wild sort of laugh. It wasn't exactly
a laugh.

"What happened?" James said sharply. "Did you
have a fight with Cliff?"

"No. Cliff's at the office. And I'm going into the
hospital."

"Why?"

"They think I might have cancer."

It was a tremendous relief to say it, a sort of emo

tional release. Poppy laughed again. Silence on the other end of the line. "Hello?"

"I'm here," James said. Then he said, "I'm com
ing over."

"No, there's no point. I've got to leave in a minute." She waited for him to say that he'd come and see her in the hospital, but he didn't.